The Changing Face of Missionary Education

International Workshop of the Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics”

The modern missionary movement provided many Indigenous and non-European groups exposure to European forms of knowledge through informal and formal instruction, particularly through schools. At such sites, various forms of knowledge and culture were dynamically transferred and transformed between Euro-missionaries and pupils, as well as across other groups in classrooms that mixed cultures and ages, as well as religious, social and gender groups.

This workshop focuses upon the overlooked role of Indigenous and non-European people working within schools run by missionaries, including day-schools, boarding schools, and industrial schools. Scholars from Africa, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, and Switzerland will discuss case studies of individuals as well as various missionary groups in order to compare the possibilities available to, as well as limitations placed upon, these non-European teachers within missionary schools across the colonial world. How were these people recruited and trained? How were they perceived by others around them, including those in the schools, on the stations, in the colonies, and in the home-countries of the missionary societies? How did changing political, social, and religious expectations affect their roles? What influences could, or did they, exert upon the curricula? What role did individual teachers play in the epistemological cleavage between children and parents that many missionary groups deemed necessary to create in the nineteenth century? In what ways did these teachers perceive themselves as part of a transnational religious or knowledge community? These are just some of the questions that will be explored in this workshop examining the changing face of missionary education.

The Changing Face of Missionary Education, 10. and 11. July 2014
Hörsaalgebäude des Exzellenzclusters
Raum JO 101
Johannisstraße 4
48143 Münster

Programme

Thursday, 10. July 2014
14:15-14:30	Greeting and Introduction	Felicity Jensz, Münster
Confessional Influences in Mission Schools in Africa		Chair: Felicity Jensz, Münster
14:30-15:00	Volkskirche, Volkekunde and Apartheid Education: Missionary Education, German Anthropology, and Science in African Education	Peter Kallaway, Cape Town
15:00-15:30	‘Bush schools’ and the Africanization of Catholic Faith. Missionaries, Teachers and Catechists in Southern Tanganyika, 1920s and 1930s	Richard Hölzl, Göttingen
	Changing Attitudes Towards African Teachers	Chair: Patrick Harries, Basel
16:00-16:30	Christian Missions, Western Education and African Female Teachers in Nineteenth-Century Sierra Leone	Silke Strickrodt, Berlin
16:30-17:00	From ‘Evangelist’ to ‘Professional’ Teacher? Changes and Continuities in the Perception of African Teachers and African Teacher Training in Natal (1840s–1930s)	Nicolas Schicketanz, Basel
17:00-17:30	The Establishment of Independent Schools in British East-Africa (1920s–1930s)	Ciprian Burlacioiu, München
17:30-18:00	Discussion
Friday, 11. July 2014
South-South Connections		Chair: Rebekka Habermas, Göttingen
09:30-10:00	Catherine Mulgrave, the Returnee African as a Pioneer of Girl Child Education in the Gold Coast in the Nineteenth Century	Abraham Nana Opare Kwakye, Basel
10:00-10:30	Negotiating Sources and Spaces: Bolivian Teachers, New Zealand Missionaries and the Bolivian Indian Mission, 1908–1941	Hugh Morrison, Dunedin
Canadian Native Teachers		Chair: Silke Strickrodt, Berlin
11:00-11:30	Ending a Mission, Beginning a School: Jesuit Missions and the Culture of Education in the St. Lawrence Valley at the End of the Eighteenth Century	Thomas Peace, London/ ON
11:30-12:00	Indigenous Teachers at Grand River, Ontario in the Nineteenth Century	Alison Norman, Peterborough/ ON
12:00-12:30	Trawling Indian Office Reports for Elusive References to Indigenous teachers in Canada, 1867–1900	Felicity Jensz, Münster
Training Institutions and Cultural Intermediaries		Chair: Hugh Morrison, Otago
14:00-14:30	Recruitment, Training and Conflicts Surrounding ‘Native teachers’ in the Moravian Mission in the Danish West Indies in the Nineteenth Century	Jan Hüsgen, Hannover
14:30-15:00	Recovering Cultural Intermediaries: Different Perspectives on a “German” Protestant Mission in Late Ottoman Beirut	Julia Hauser, Göttingen
15:30-16:30	Discussion